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Macaroni Pudding

A baked macaroni pudding made with macaroni, water, butter, milk, sugar, lemon peel, cinnamon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Macaroni Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in the water until tender and it has soaked up the liquid. Cook in a furnace kettle.

  2. Add the butter and salt.

  3. Cover for five minutes without cooking.

Add milk and simmer

  1. Stir in the milk, sugar, lemon peel, and cinnamon.

  2. Simmer for ten minutes after boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep dish.

  2. Stir carefully to avoid breaking the macaroni.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Its starch swells and softens in boiling water, giving the pudding its body and texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, so the macaroni becomes soft and creamy as it simmers.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the mild, starchy macaroni.
Butter
Adds fat, which gives a smoother mouthfeel and richer flavor.

The step that matters

Boil the macaroni until tender before adding the milk. Pasta starch needs to be fully hydrated and softened in boiling water first. If it is not tender before the milk goes in, it stays firm and the pudding will not become soft and cohesive during simmering.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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